Private schools line up to back academies

The big guns of education's private sector have thrown their weight behind the Government's academies programme, paving the way for their biggest ever stake in the running of state schools.

Lord Adonis, the Schools minister, announced plans yesterday for three more academies to be backed by private schools – bringing the total numbersponsored by private schools to 47.

Lancing, Hurstpierpoint and Ardingley, all fee-paying schools in West Sussex, are to sponsor three new academies in the county.

In addition, Birkenhead High School for Girls, in Merseyside, a top performing school in private school league tables, announced it was planning to join the state sector as an academy. It will be the fifth private school to do so since the Government offered an olive branch to the sector to join.

Birkenhead, a former direct grant school until that status disappeared in the Seventies as a result of Labour's pro-comprehensive drive, will now abandon selection as a result of its decision. However, it will retain control over the running of the school.

Lord Adonis, who was at the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, which represents 250 of the country's elite fee-paying schools, in Bournemouth, predicted a return to the days when the direct grant schools were part of the state sector. He also outlined plans for an increase in the number of boarding places in state schools – a move already being planned by at least two academies.

He said he wanted to see an expansion of a pilot scheme, already launched in 53 schools, mostly private, which offered boarding school places to children from troubled backgrounds.

A prospectus launched yesterday aimed at persuading more private schools to join the academies programme said that it "offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break down the historic divide between the state and private sectors of education in England".

Top private schools such as Dulwich College, Wellington College and Marlborough College all pledged their support for sponsoring academies yesterday. Others backing academies include Millfield, the top sports school, and Harrow.

Lord Adonis coupled his plea for more private schools to back the programme with a warning that rates of failure in the state sector were still too high. In particular, he singled out 800 state secondary schools, one in four across the country, where fewer than 30 per cent of pupils obtained five A* to C grade passes at GCSE, including maths and English.

These schools, he argued were precisely the reason why the help of independent schools was needed to support the academies programme. "Our top schools in the country are among the best in the world," he said, "but the gap between top and bottom is too large.

"In some 800 schools fewer than 30 per cent of pupils obtain five good GCSE passes including maths and English, which is simply not acceptable in the future. Many of these 800 schools are improving rapidly under their own steam but many aren't or aren't improving fast enough to give confidence to their parents that they will become good schools for their children to learn in." He blamed weak leadership for contributing to their failure.

His comments provoked fury from teachers' leaders last night. John Dunford, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: "It is quite wrong to say that all these 800 schools are giving a bad education."

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, added that it was "extraordinary" for the Government to encourage private school sponsorship of academies. "Lord Adonis' plea to extract the 'educational DNA' from private schools seems to me an explicit criticism of the lack of 'educational DNA' of the current academy sponsors," he added. "I reject the assumption that somehow private schools and their quality of teaching is better than state schools." He said that many private school teachers would have "nowhere near the level of commitment and experience" of teaching in inner-city schools that state school teachers had.

Anthony Seldon, the head of Wellington College, which is sponsoring a state boarding academy to be built on nearby Salisbury Plain, said: "It is completely wrong in the 21st century to have an isolated private sector and a state sector where children have lesser opportunities. That is not helpful to the nation."

In the prospectus, independent schools were given three ways of backing the programme: by becoming the lead sponsor of a new academy, becoming a joint sponsor or by joining the state sector as academies. If they do the latter, they will have to give up selection.